Baltimore Voices Company

About this collection

This exhibit provides an introduction to the Baltimore Voices Company (BVC) collection, a public history project from the early 1980s.

The Baltimore Voices Company was a collaboration between the Baltimore Neighborhood Heritage Project (BNHP) and the Baltimore Theatre Project to produce a play about Baltimore neighborhoods. To create the play, which was performed throughout the city and adapted for television by the Maryland Center for Public Broadcasting,[1]the Voices Company used existing oral histories and conducted their own tape-recorded interviews. The BVC interviews were organized around specific themes, including labor, education, and community organizing. Theses themes became the subject of a series of community forums led by the Voices Company to encourage public discussion.

The complete BVC collection at the University of Baltimore consists of 48 linear feet of archival records, which are described on an online collection guide. From the complete collection, selected materials are featured in this exhibit, including audio clips of interviews and their corresponding transcripts.